The Neandertal genome project was initiated in 2006 to sequence the 3 billion bases that make up the complete genome of the closest human relative – the Neandertals. A multidisciplinary research consortium led by Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, is undertaking analysis of the sequence data which has been generated in collaboration with 454 Life Sciences and Illumina. [Information of the supplier]